“Doctors and nurses could not stress enough how terrified they are at these numbers”
Ketamine is a dissociative anaesthetic with some hallucinogenic effects, which vary depending on how much is taken. There are bumps, swiftly snorted, usually off the tip of a key, providing a wavy, dream-like state, or snorting a line, sending you into a ‘K hole’ where it can feel like you’ve departed your body and entered into a completely different realm. However you take it, time is distorted, but the effects only last 30 minutes to one hour, before you are pulled back into the room, and reality. It’s this (the short-term high and its cheap price – averaging at around £20 a gram, versus up to £100 for a gram of coke) that, I’m told, is one of the main reasons behind the drug’s soaring popularity.
While it’s mostly still known as a recreational drug, a more sinister spike in addiction has begun to emerge. Addiction pulling some, like Kim, into its grip, and refusing to release them. ‘We are seeing an increase that is growing at a rapid rate,’ explains Rehabs UK senior treatment adviser, Scott Ardley. ‘20 per cent of our weekly enquiries relate to ketamine, compared with last year, when they’d have been around 5%. The clients are normally between the ages of 16 and 23, and generally a higher percentage of females.’ Government figures show that the number of young people in treatment for ketamine problems has increased from less than 1% in 2015 to 2016, to 5% in 2020 to 2021. This year, it has increased to 6%. This is what I am in Liverpool to investigate. A place where ketamine use is rising, according to the recovery specialists at WithYou, a charity that offers free confidential support to people struggling with drugs and alcohol. Alex Lowry, the young person and family treatment and recovery manager, has let me spend the day with her and her team at the charity’s base in Garston, in the east of the city. It’s here that I meet Kim, who has been engaging with their services for the past five years, after first trying ketamine at 18. Across the country, WithYou has seen a 71% increase in the number of young people (those under 24) being supported for ketamine use during this period.
Read more here:
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a61486508/inside-the-ketamine-crisis